Outdoor Morris Chair #20: What makes it a Morris Chair?

The Morris Chair is said to have been the first recliner. The original Lazy-boy. This version of the chair has a twist on the traditional Morris chair. On the Stickley Morris chairs that I have seen there are tabs on the arm behind the chair and there’s a bar that goes across the back between the arms which is used to support the back. There are several places that the bar can be moved into.

In this twist, the holes go in the arms and dowels go into the holes in the arm. The bar has a down-facing dowel that fits into the three holes. The front position is pretty nearly straight up. The middle position is really comfortable and the rear position is fall asleep in your chair comfortable.

How do you get the holes on the two sides to align perfectly? Well, what we did was to put the bar about where it needed to be, cut the half deep hole in the bar and install the dowel. We then set the bar to touch both sides of the back and marked where the holes would be on that side. We then installed the second dowel. Perfect fit in all three positions in spite of the fairly tight tolerances. If the three holes in your arms are in line, it should all work well.